Not everybody's game

Startups undoubtedly open up a whole new world of opportunities, but carry out due diligence before taking the plunge.

- Nistha Tripathi

When Paras Chopra finished his college and joined Grail Research, he immediately realised that he was not cut out for a job. He took up an R&D role at a startu—Aspiring Minds— and pursued his own interests on the side for the next two years. In two years, his own project had grown big enough that he decided to quit his job and work on his own ideas full time. Today, his company Wingify has US$18 million-plus in annual revenue.

Over the last ten years, Indian’s interest in entrepreneurship has grown multifold. At the same time, the Indian startup ecosystem is maturing up and the exuberance sobering down. On one hand, we have senior professionals like Girish Mathrubootham leaving their corporate careers to build unicorns like Freshworks; on the other, we have Ritesh Agarwal of OYO who never finished college and started his entrepreneurship journey in his teens.

With such inspirational stories around, Indian students are not just chasing the big consulting, IT, and financial employers anymore—they are thinking of joining a fast-growing startup or starting something of their own, right after college. Few institutes such as IITs and Jaipuria Institute of Management are encouraging this trend by providing deferred placement policies wherein a student starting his own venture can come back to the campus within the next two years and still appear for placements.

The perfect time to consider different career choices and ask yourself if you want to try the thrill of creating something new is when you are young. Many of today’s successful startups were borne out of discussions in a dorm room where friends became co-founders later on. Case in point: Ather Energy, Airbnb, Warby Parker, etc. Where else would you find such trusted people around you with whom you can take a leap of faith to start a venture?